About Us

The Conservative Tree House may be called a Last Refuge for each of us for different reasons. Whatever trail through the woods brought us here, we have shared the turmoil of storms as we have been finding our voices as individuals in this growing community

Perhaps you’ve had some truly shockingly cruel things said to you purely because you believe in limited government and fiscal conservatism. Perhaps you not only believe that we should be self-reliant and personally responsible, but also believe that when we are allowed to depend on ourselves, we are stronger, more successful, take greater pride in ourselves and our work, and are more likely to make positive contributions to society. And then we are happier people, or at least more likely to be happier.

Which lends to the following theory: Fear is at the core of liberalism, and love/trust is at the core of conservatism. Liberalism is about control. Conservatism is about self-empowerment.

Control is a reaction to fear. Think in terms or politics and society – the fear behind liberalism is the fear that someone might withhold things (opportunities, money, whatever) from me, fear that if you live your life in a way I dislike that it might affect my life, fear that if you get that job, there will be nothing left for me. Fear that if you make tons of money, it’s means there’s less money out there for me. So people who believe in liberal ideologies seek control as a means of trying to create guarantees and safeguards against those circumstances they fear. Liberals try to control the world and people to enable their comfort and happiness. Which, as we know, is an endless quest. Trying to control others does nothing in the way of making oneself happy. By extension, voting in this mindset so that government can try to control others will also – shocking – not lead to a happier, more comfortable life.

The conservative (and moderate, independent, but for the sake of expediency, the conservative), on the other hand, relies on himself to meet his own needs. And the trade off of being free to live his life as he wishes is also understanding that he has to make peace with how you live yours. By extension, aware that he wants to be able to hold onto this liberty and freedom forever, the conservative votes accordingly, so that everyone can remain free and in charge of his or her own life.

But here’s the crucial difference, perhaps, particularly where misery on the left stems: The conservative does not worry, so to speak, about you. The conservative knows that you were born with the same access to self-love, self-empowerment, self-determination and self-reliance that we all were, no matter the circumstances into which you were born. (Think about the millions of people this country has allowed to crawl up from poverty into prosperity – the conservative KNOWS this is possible.) And the conservative believes that if you want prosperity, or a good job, or a good education, you can make it happen – but you have to work hard. The conservative hopes and intends that the free markets bring you all of the affordable and positive opportunities and resources that you need. The conservative also knows that on the other side of that hard work is great reward – material and, more importantly, emotional, spiritual and mental.

The conservative understands that not only is it a waste of time to try to control you, it’s actually impossible. Humans were born to be free. And if we put a roadblock in front of you, you’ll find another way around it. So we see attempts at control as a waste of resources, energy and time at best, and at worst, creating detrimental results that serve to hinder people’s upward mobility or teach dependence. We see much more efficiency, as well as endless opportunity, in leaving you to your own devices. And we want the same in return.

This is where democrats mis-view republicans as heartless. But really, the conservative believes that there is one and one path only to sustainable success and independence – and that is self-empowerment. All other avenues – welfare, affirmative action, housing loans you can’t actually afford – ultimately risk doing a disservice to people as they teach dependence on special circumstances, the govt, or arbitrary assistance (that can disappear tomorrow). And the real danger – they will ALWAYS backfire, and leave the recipient in equally or more dire circumstances. Any false improvement will always expire.

The conservative believes in abundance. The liberal believes in scarcity.

The conservative believes man is born free and will be who he is, no matter what arbitrary limitations or rules are put on him. The liberal believes man is perfectible, and by extension, believes a society at large is perfectible, and command and control is justified in the quest to a “perfect” utopian society. (Sounds familiar!)

The conservative tends to be more faithful – and not necessarily in God, but in the ability of the individual to find great strength in himself (or from his God) to get what he needs and to be successful. Therefore the conservative has an outlet for his fear and disappointment – trust and faith in something bigger. The liberal believes the system must be perfected in order to enable success. Therefore disappointment is channeled as anger and blame at the system. Voids are left to be filled by faith in the govt, which they surely then want to come in and “fix” things.

And therein lies the roots of love and fear respectively. For the conservative, when life presents great struggles, he knows he has the power to surmount them. Happiness stems from internal strength and perseverance. For the liberal, when life presents great struggles, the system failed, therefore they were at the mercy of a faulty system, and they believe that only when the system is fixed can their life improve. Happiness is built on systemic contingencies, which they will then seek to control or expect someone else to.

One blames himself. The other blames anyone and everyone but himself.

And there it is. There’s where the meanness comes from. The liberal ideology causes that person to cast anger at the world when things go wrong or appear “unfair.” He constantly chooses only to see the “injustices” – and that makes for a very miserable, mean, blame-casting existence.

One last point that we have seen over and over and over with many (not all) of our liberal friends: Extreme stinginess and cheapness.

In our conservative community growing up, we were always taught that you give when people are in need – make donations to the Red Cross when there’s an earthquake, donate to charity when you can afford it, etc. Even if it’s just $50 here and there – it’s the right thing to do. Conservatives see this as the responsibility that comes with gaining from the capitalistic system; if you happen to benefit greatly from the system, it’s your duty to give back.

The liberal, on the other hand, does not seem to share this same viewpoint, at least not in my experience. And perhaps think this is linked to believing in scarcity, and that your dollar comes at the cost of mine. So it seems that liberals, on some level of consciousness, feel guilty about not being voluntarily charitable. Therefore, to write off their guilt, they outsource their “generosity” to the government by voting for wealth re-distributive policies. Thus, the liberal cheats himself of the joy and addictiveness of direct generosity. (Not to mention – re distributive policies ALWAYS end up dis-empowering those who they’re meant to help.)

However each of us got here, it’s probably a fact that we have the turmoil of those storms in common, perhaps some unease that we could share and always, we also find fresh ground to cover from day to day. We’re developing valuable relationships as we trust one another in our community in the woods. The chatting in the branches encourages, strengthens and equips for some serious walking.

We think the Treehouse is a good armory for those who doing long distance walking for the sake of our nation. We hope you’ll think so, too. Find yourself a good branch….or just pull up a rock to the campfire.

As a Massachusetts native who lived through the Catholic Church child abuse scandal, I can certainly recognize a Liberal-Socialist when I see one.
The litmus test always amounts to his/her attitude toward the basic human understanding about “personal accountability”.
Socialists (liberals) will always make excuses for those who do not choose to be personally accountable for their themselves or their families.
Our sectarian society has been purposefully engineered over the last few generations by faithless and unaccountable malcontents.
Our faith-based conservative values will always be rooted in our conviction that we are all accountable for our own actions and inactions.
On this Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for all other conservatives who teach their children well about personal accountability. Love and gratitude to each of you.

Have followed the last refuge and numerous other posters on Twitter until recently, when it seems I’m being whittled down to just a few now. Loomer, Impedator Rex, Matt Bracken, Thomas Wictor to name a few have either been banned or have chosen to move on and I think it’s time for me to do the same. All in all, it’s a good time to move to the conservative treehouse website and leave twitter to fend on its own, rather than die the slow death of the censorship of truly useful news that is crucial to navigate this world.

It seems the right thing to do, going “Galt,” as why shake your fist at the owner of Twitter, while you are powerless to change their mind of who and what they will remove in the name of “diversity.” Maybe if enough drop off the Twitter universe, they will die of their own lack of anything useful to add to society.

Discovered this site today while reading Powerline comments. Jubilant that I am not only one that thinks this way!!!!
I’ve given up on the Republican Party because they rarely deliver.
President Trump’s election was providential IMHO. It is great to exchange ideas but how do we get things done and move the ball down field? Any ideas would be welcome.
A grateful veteran,
Marhabal

my name shows up here ….but for some reason, I don’t receive your daily postings of the Last Refuge in my mailbox…Ive looked in junk too….not there…unless you haven’t sent anything out in the last 5 days

Have you considered adding a paragraph about family, mariage, children and differences in how liberals and conservatives view such a fundamental building block of a healthy society, strong culture, stable nation – liberals would despise and deconstruct (Marxism), whereas conservatives cherish and build ? Thank you

Sorry I am replying so late (10 months) but I just started to get into really reading what everyone is writing here, I agree that the things you mention about the differences in the viewpoints of liberals and conservatives.

These writings should be pursued (if they have not been already done).

Shining the light of truth on all the corruption in DC will take a lots of guts and perseverance. This needs to happen to help those who are part of the solution and not part of the problem. I consider efforts made at The Last Refuge to be a great part of advancing solutions !

I encourage the Last Refuge to open a GAB.ai account and mirror its tweets to GAB. Each day, more and more people are having their twitter accounts suspended or locked by Twitter for engaging in nothing more than a defense of America, free speech and Trump. We need the news and commentary of the Last Refuge on GAB to prepare for 2020.

I was targeted, attacked electronically & DOA with my posts there. I emailed & requested assistance from the gab staff – which turned a blind eye to my requests for assistance. gab proved to be just another fb & twitter.

This website is an absolute blessing, and the above “about us” statement is one of the most cogent and eloquent summaries I’ve read that addresses not only our political reality, but in many ways our spiritual reality. (It is reminiscent of Thomas Sowell’s writings in his book, Conflict of Visions.) I have been reading these pages for a few months now, and have found the insights contained therein to be very perceptive and wise, if not prophetic. Godspeed, and pray fervently in Jesus’ name, lovers of liberty. There is a great and ancient evil amassing in the world.

Note: I created a new account because the site wasn’t recognizing me (usually) ‘liking’ posts under my old google log-in (DW). Still having issues. Oh well, probably a problem on my end. Anyway, your post deserves another ‘like’ !

Sundance, your site is being hijacked by this iPhone malware and I cannot read your site on my phone. The Daily Caller had this issue a few weeks ago and apparently solved it. Hopefully you can resolve it quickly. Love the Treehouse!

Inspirational. I have been reading here for about 6 months and have made a few comments, but just saw this About Us today. I am tired of reading short biographies of people. Yes you should be proud of your advanced degrees(I have 4 years of post-graduate) but I don’t even tell people about mine and I certainly don’t care about anyone’s LLM from Harvard. Especially since that LLM normally leads to a government job.

Thomas Jefferson had 150 government jobs. In this modern age The U.S. could probably get by with 10,000. I live in a foreign country that has a 11% tax rate including Medicare for all(along with a wonderful and cheap private system) and we get by just fine(Latin America) with a relatively small government.

This is a great site and I intend to support you by responding to your advertisers as much as I can.

Glad to have so many new treeper’s and hope you find the limbs welcoming. Just so you know aside from supporting the Word Press advertisers there is also a yellow donate button on the upper right corner of site which directly supports Sundance and this terrific site.

As a long-time reader, I’ve noticed an irritating, very repetitive intrusion when hitting the “continued” button with Treehouse articles: the page turns into a required invitation to upgrade to a new Adobe Acrobat. And you cannot (or at least my Mac cannot) simply kill the page ad because doing so takes me out of all current browser pages and I have to open up Treehouse again and find the article, which this time usually runs without the intrusion. Just thought I’d mention this if some nefarious controller somewhere in the web is trying to discourage reading the Treehouse. I can imagine all sorts of quiet, nefarious methods that gatekeepers might use to limit conservative information. But I suppose this could be a one-off issue with my computer (running latest Safari update), but that I doubt.

I’ve been trying 2 think of a way to mobilize in each city state. Its x to b heard we hv been silent too long. Republican senators don’t do anything a few hor repubs speak out. The Republicans hv no guts maybe cuz they r trying to hide something themself besides there hate for P.T. also. So we need to come out of the closet and speak out and show r self and help get the truth out there. Stop democ from subpoena only conservatives then belittle them during this and not letting them talk. Especially Tlabi and Omar who bring n there anti semitic remarks and they kno zero. So who wants to do this.

I just found this site via a link from a comment on another conservative site. We are out here, and have been silent for too long, likely fearful of being attacked by those who would suppress free speech to push their evil agenda. I hope and pray that this will change soon, and will do whatever I can, with my limited resources, to make it happen. You have a new reader.

First time viewer. Now, lifetime viewer, and financial contributor. I have been asked why I believe in conservatism by my 20, and 26 year old children. I know, but I could not come up with a concise, (correct vocabulary), succinct, and simple description. What I just read is IT!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

I had a tree house when I a kid. I fell one day while climbing the boards we nailed to the tree trunk. I did not break anything but was rendered unconscious. I say I didn’t break anything, but something happened because six years later I joined the Marine Corps instead of the Air Force.

I have to wonder why a conservative, principled website tolerates such vulgar, disrespectful comments about women, particularly referring to their looks. If someone objects they are labeled radical. This is a regular, everyday occurrence. White males object to being stereotyped and criticized yet they freely do this to women.

I’m not a USA citizen, and I don’t live there. But I’ve visited few times and worked with Americans in the past and being at the center of the western world makes the USA and what happens there of interest to citizens of other countries. I’m not here to attack, offend or impose, nor trying to promote an ideological position. I think we humans have the need to live in a decent and fair society. Different countries have achieved this under slightly different political and social systems. The western world in particular is characterized by capitalism, the rule of law, democratic elected governments, social responsibility, etc. Different systems, similar achievements. I’m always a bit amused at how liberalism and conservatism are defined in the USA, which are a bit different at how they are understood in other countries of the western world. Reading the about section I see that some of the attributes of USA conservatism includes attributes that liberals in other parts of the world assign to themselves. And liberalism outside USA includes characteristics of USA conservatism. Which is good, and it shows that possibly these concepts are not that different. In my personal experience, when participating of a conversation when someone self-identifies with liberalism or conservatism, I ask for clarification, asking to name three ideas/principles/concepts that are the most important to them. Most of the time, what they are looking for is quite similar to what I’m looking for, and if it’s not case, it makes the discussion more concise and precise, which is usually not the case when labels are discussed . Simply, my approach is to look for commonalities between people, and build a discussion from there. Or trying to understand the differences and see the merits of each position. Labeling, attributing qualities that may or may not be true never got me anywhere in any dialogue.

That is because Liberalism in America of today is not the Liberalism of 40-50 years ago. The rest of the world still perscribes to the principles of the later while today’s liberalism has been infiltrated by communists/socialists over that time into what we see today.

sorry to be such a dork but i’m slightly confused and have only been stopping by to read stuff for a couple of years, I guess, tho with increasing intensity to the point where now i check in religiously several times a day. so first of all, thanks “sundance” — you’re rocking my ass off! i only have one slight problem/question: i wanted to know more about yesterdays entry about the treasury department whistleblower, and I typed “treasury whistleblower complaint 2020” into google search and clicked on something from americanbhuddist.net, primarily because their article was entitled “Three recent deep-background stories that describe how political spying happened under obama.” The first article linked to the ohio star. the second article linked to your piece from yesterday. And the third article linked to something described as (Obama Exposed: There Were No FISA Warrants, There Was No Incidental Surveillance, There Was The Hammer — The Persecution Of General Flynn). I clicked and was sent to the American Report, which, let me double check, yeah, i don’t see in your list of friendly colleagues headed by American Thinker [which is great by the way, out of San Diego no less]. Anyway, I’m afraid I may have just answered my own question, though! When I went to check that list of other online colleagues, i noticed that in fact you do have a search function for the website, so i will quit bothering you and get back to work. what i was going to ask you about is the whistleblower, Dennis Montgomery, but I’ll see for myself whether you have brought him up before. Either way, the article is fascinating and yet only hints at what they refer to as “the hammer.” And at the end of that piece they refer you to another article entitled “The Hammer Is The Key to The Coup,” which is something U.S. Navy Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons said on his death bed to U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney (Ret.). It’s all very much a mind blower, so i guess my parting question would be where in all this “the hammer” comes into play, or is “the hammer” just another name for the nsa database? I think they may be separate. if so, our only query would be what’s up with the hammer? oh! and do you guys need any help? i’d love to volunteer in your mail room during the election season. forgive my naiveté and ignorance. bless you for your incomparable commitment. best of luck. bob

Bob M. I’ve only been here for 3 or 4 years, but CTH is the bomb. You don’t get endless “sources say” The downside is you get a ton of very smart people expressing different points of view. Unfortunately, half of them are lawyers who will gleefully argue over the minutiae of law.
I’m here for a different purpose however. I’m not a lawyer, and when the discussion becomes arcane, I try to gently protest. When I occasionally think I can add value, I do try to comment. I try to look at my comment’s likes to insure that I’m not being snarky. However, WordPress’s randomly deciding that I need to log in (or reply) discourages that.. This evening, a new WordPress glitch. i’ve made a couple of comment and WordPress is sending replies to me from someone or some threads which I don’t recognize.
HELLO????